About the book

We are all deeply affected by witnessing the global atmosphere of division, devastation, and turmoil. As witnesses to this insanity, it is natural to feel dark emotions - despair, grief, fear, anger, helplessness, sadness, and a sense of existential confusion and meaningless.

At a personal level, we are struggling to deal with our dark emotions, the personal insecurities and inner wounds of past and present events and contexts. In retreating into addictions, numbness, or distractions, we try to escape the increasing sense of instability and threat to our mental and spiritual wellbeing.

This book is a personal story of one man's exploration of the ancient idea of wholeness as a way of dealing with colliding inner and outer worlds. This book offers an original guiding framework to help the reader to discover and develop their own unique wholeness. It is a personal, ‘spiritual but not religious’ narrative that offers ways that we may become aligned with our highest potential amidst increasing turmoil and instability.

One Reader's Review:

I love how books land in life when you are ready for them. Peter's book is an invitation to wake up to all of who you are. It's not a call to escape into nature, forget your troubles and bliss out. This is a call to meet all of who you are, your Divine goodness and your messy badness. To walk through life holding all of you in wholeness. With presence and awareness you cross the threshold into a place I imagine to feel true freedom. This book leads you along the way. Thank you Peter and your many guides for guiding and even simply stating that there is a way to wholeness.
Sarah V, Sydney, Australia

An Authentic Path to Wholeness

I want to share with you how and why I came to discover and become consciously whole. Becoming whole has little to do with my career and work experiences, primarily as an environmental planner over a 20 year period. I am no psychotherapist or life coach or director of a research or training organisation. I may not be in the upper echalons of personal change agents such as Echart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, or Gabor Mate but I have my own unique life path, full of holes and wounds and insecurities, that you and many others might relate to. If the idea of becoming whole attracts you, if navigating your way through the wounded worlds within and around you is important, then please read on. I may just be able to help you.

It was through immersive experiences in nature, following my NatureConnect approach, that I became aware of two aspects of wholeness: 1)  the experience of being whole, enough and acknowledging and accepting of the parts of myself (the good, bad, and the ‘ugly’) and my life situation, and 2) the wholeness of the natural world i.e all the parts of a forest contributing to the health of the whole but arising from the whole (forest). Although I didn’t label these experiences, these insights as wholeness, I later realised the importance of wholeness via profound nature connection to my psychological and spiritual wellbeing.

Through reading the books about wholeness by the American educator Parker Palmer and American physicist David Bohm, as well as the commendation by my spirit guide, Michael (yes, a scientific oriented thinker can be spiritual too!), I recognised the usefulness of wholeness as a guiding idea and framework for coping with mental health, for becoming authentic and aligned to your total self, in understanding the nature of reality and identity, and for clarifying life direction issues. At the beginning of my exploratory journey, early 2020, I was in a dark hole, overwhelmed by confusion about life direction, feeling lost within myself, a broken relationship, and no-one to turn to.

So, in early 2020 with the arrival of the COVID 19 pandemic, I committed to getting my act together, to take responsibility for my unhappiness and lostness, and learn what it meant to become whole, to overcome my inner brokenness and fractured thinking. The circumstances were not ideal, surrounded by massive bushfires, then floods, then marriage breakdown, financial insecurity, autoimmune illness in my youngest son, social isolation, and moving home five times in five years. The etymology of whole means healing, and in these circumstances, I felt broken, anxious but yearning to be whole.

As I came to learn, brokenness or persistent emotional or psychological instability and fragility can be the conduit, the cracks in the armour that allows the light of self-understanding to filter through. It is feeling and relating into the wound that the healing can be experienced. I had been carrying my psychological armour, unconsciously so, all of my life, primarily to protect the fears, pain, insecurities and other wounds from childhood and earlier. A large part of becoming whole is awakening to this, to understand how your behaviours, thinking and feeling state patterns, and your pain and suffering in general, have been directed from these childhood adaptations and ensuing wounds. So I learnt all of this without guidance except my spirit friends and through research and contemplative, reflective practices. The book was part of this journey and the program I offer arises from the book and distilling my life and wholeness experiences.

Testimonials

What is your inner pain asking of you?

Are you feeling lost, persistently unhappy and disillusioned with your life, or parts of it? Do you have patterns - thinking, emotions, behaviours - that are undermining or fracturing your life? Are your decisions leading to unhappy, discordant outcomes, more pain and suffering?

Do you feel its time to step up and become accountable for the state of your inner life? Is it time to make a commitment to fundamental change? Can you invest a reasonable amount that will have lifelong benefits? If the answer is intuitively 'Yes!', then read on....

Becoming consciously whole is about healing and living into your highest self, your whole self. To be human is to be wounded, unconsciously so. So it is how you access your unconscious and embrace these wounds that determines if you can learn and grow through them.

Becoming whole is about aligning with your total self. As you become grounded in your own truth, your own wisdom and coherence, you become more empowered and resilient. Its NOT just about resolving a specific issue, its a journey rather than an event. There are no quick fixes to healing the wounds within. This is a slow methodical journey into your highest potential. Read my reflections on what the journey to wholeness offers, and requires of you.

Embracing your Wholeness: Are you Ready?

As tensions, uncertainty, and devastation deepen throughout the world, it may also exacerbate your own personal sense of vulnerability. We are all burdened by our insecurities, our worries, our private pain and witnessing the world’s pain may contribute uncomfortably to our own.

To be human is to be wounded and increasingly our wounds are wounding, if not breaking, the life support capacities of the Earth. Some wounds are superficial, the worst lie festering in our unconscious. What we are unconscious to, what we suppress, we remain attached to, directed by.

The world cannot be healed until we awaken to our festering wounds. You cannot be healed until you face what has fractured your original sense of self and the hidden wounds. You must reveal what lies hidden. To leave the old path of disconnect, you must journey inwards where wholeness awaits.

You are crossing a threshold between the old path you have been following, and the new path that beckons you forth. It is a confusing stage. You are not alone. Your yearning, those quiet whispers from within invite you to discover your own authentic path. Are you listening?

In my darkest of times, when feeling broken, stuck, confused, filled by dark emotions, I heard whispers within calling me into the dark unknown. I am scared of the dark. Yet the pain of being on the surface was greater than my fear of my darkness. So my journey began.

Every step along the way I doubted myself; my strength, my courage to confront the painful truths, my adaptations that had become wounding. The sadness of a life less lived, the wounds that led to harmful actions, limited thinking, broken relations. I had lived unconsciously, unhappily to the beat of my wounds.

In embracing your wounds and letting them be, or go, you are committing to the inner work of deep change. It is never easy, it cannot be just handed to you, only fought for, time and again. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke said, “You must change your life, it must happen over and over again”.

You need to step fully, wholly into this threshold to free yourself from the grip, the domination of the limiting patterns and beliefs that are causing so much suffering. You cannot continue to invest in the old path, your limiting ways of being in this broken world that threatens to suffocate you.

When you step into your new path, you recognise that your wounds must be your teachers. The great Persian mystic, Rumi, instructed his readers: “The wound is the place where the Light enters you”. Embracing your wounds is to shed light into both your darkness and the potential of wholeness.

To break free of the pain, if not the suffering you have endured for years, you need to be honest, compassionate with how you arrived at this point of change. It requires honesty, courage, and perseverance. The choice is yours; you can either awaken or you can remain asleep.

You cannot journey from the darkness of the old ways to the light of the new without embracing your souls’ invitations. You are called by the mystery within to breathe into this journey, to enlighten your darkness. If you do, you will be liberated to be all that you can be.  

It is not, however just about coming into wholesome relationship with the inner and outer darkness. There is much more to becoming the whole of you, an aligned, joyful, loving sense of self connected to your soul and the Divine. Your wholeness beckons. Are you listening?

Becoming whole requires you to acknowledge and integrate all that you are, the good stuff, the painful and limiting aspects. It requires developing and nourishing the faith and trust in your totality. To bring all your parts into a single harmonious whole self. The Wisdom of Wholeness Program offers the opportunity to do this, are you ready?

Peter R White PhD

Sydney, Australia 2023

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Perspectives

Wholeness in daily living includes taking a broader perspective to the world and relations around you so that your engage from your highest self. In doing this, you open to new insights and perspectives that shed light on your identity and your world. Here are my sharings

Any questions about the book or program?

If you have read the book and are interested to know more about my story, my experiences, or about the program, drop me a line here.

    About me

    My career was as a consultant environmental planner involved in assessment and conservation. I have degrees in ecology (BSc), sustainability (MSc) and ecopsychology (PhD). Over many years I volunteered my expertise and efforts for numerous community and environmental organisations and campaigns. The past decade or so I have focused on firstly nature connection activities for groups, and of late, on raising awareness about the therapeutic benefits of wholeness. I am currently developing a wholeness program based on one-to-one coaching. I have two sons and live in Sydney, Australia. If your are interested, drop me a line.